On Monday MySpace will announce a partnership with California startup Gracenote to help detect and block copyrighted music from being posted on MySpace member pages. This will allow them to be more proactive about copyright enforcement, in addition to complying with DMCA take-down notices.
YouTube made a similar announcement earlier this year, although YouTube is not simply blocking copyrighted material - instead they are encouraging the copyright holder to allow the use and take a revenue share from advertising placed around the video.
Copyrighted material, particularly music, is one of the key drivers of the success of social networks. Over 3 million bands now have pages at MySpace - it is now a defacto requirement for a band to have a MySpace presence. Competitor Bebo recently announced that they have over 300,000 bands after just one year.
Recent news suggests YouTube’s free ride on the copyright infringement gravy train may be coming to an end. They’ve complied with “requests” to remove 30,000 Japanese media clips, as well as clips from Comedy Central shows. Rumor has it that in the past, marketing departments for TV shows would anonymously upload content to YouTube to get exposure, even while their legal departments were issuing take-down notices for the very same content. Now that everyone understands the value of being the online network for TV clips ($1.65 billion), copyright holders are taking a step back and thinking about how they can get a piece of that money, too.
Comments
Gracenote is hardly a startup, it’s been around for over a decade.
Quote: “MySpace will announce a partnership with California startup Gracenote to help [...]”
How is Gracenote a startup?
Gracenote has been around a while.. I started working for an online media provider in about 2002 or so and at that time Gracenote was already the established facility to verify CD contents..
hm. ok, when does a startup become a “company”? When I say startup, I mean it as a compliment, by the way.
Didn’t mean to oppose.. was just curious as to the definition of a startup versus that of a company
Isn’t Gracenote the company that essentially stole all the volunteer work of Internet users to compile CDDB, which then spawned the creation of FreeDB?
There is a ton of news about the big corporate companies protecting their Copyrights.
It is time for the independents to protect their Copyrights too!
My Free Copyright will be launching end of November to bring third party date registration and protection for original digital creations.
Find out more about My Free Copyright.
Extactly, Gracenote is the company that took CDDB and then tried to lock up all the patents around music meta content.. Though YouTube is more upfront on taking and owning your content.. Nothing stops them from using your posted content and making a Best of YouTube DVD or TV show and not paying you a dime…
Let’s save the rest of this tantalizing conversation for a post written about whether or not Gracenote is a startup.
I believe this post is about MySpace having a successful enough music offering to be able to block copyright infringing content from their site, and about YouTube adopting a haphazard “poor man’s Revver” stance on video ownership and copyright. The MySpace move seems predictable, but also responsible. They clearly believe that obeying the law and respecting copyright will not hurt their business.
YouTube on the other hand, seem fairly confident that simply not accepting copyright infringing material would crush their business post haste. I think this is a fairly good illustration of why MySpace is a weak product built on a solid business model and YouTube is a better product built on a flimsy-at-best business model. They simply don’t have the option of behaving responsibly, since the entirety of their business is based around behaving irresponsibly. They are still not protecting artists and creators, they are simply giving them an opportunity to step forward and say “Hey! that’s mine! Gimme some of the money it generates from now on!” No mention of the money it had made thus far, or for whom it was made.
Disclaimer: I work for Revver. We’re so the good guys on this one.
Isn’t this like freestyleworldmusic.com issue?
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